In this study, the control method of assistive robot was developed for the elderly. The control method of gait-assistant-robot was proposed considering the change of COP (Center of Pelves), BOS (Base of Support) and comparative analysis of the moving velocity for the elderly. We analyzed the movement of COP of the body and its velocity of the elderly equipped with manual walker and gait-assistant-robot. As a result, change in COP was greater from left to right than from anterior to posterior; also, the average velocity of the movement of COP and manual walker for manual walker gait was 0.7(m/s). Therefore, it is necessary to concern more on the left-right balance and synchronization of the velocity of COP.

Many researchers have tried to detect the falling and to reduce the injury associated with falling. Normally the method of detection of a loss of balance is more efficient than that of a compensatory motion in order to predict the falling. The detection algorithm of the loss of balance was composed of three main parts: parts of processing of measured data, construction of an internal model and detection of the loss of balance. The internal model represented a simple dynamic motion balancing with two rear legs of a four-legged chair and was a simplified model of a central nervous system of a person. The internal model was defined by the experimental data obtained within a fixed time interval, and was applied to the detecting algorithm to the end of the experiment without being changed. The balancing motion controlled by the human brain was improved in process of time because of the experience accruing to the brain from controlling sensory organs. In this study a reconstruction method of the internal model was used in order to improve the success rate and the detecting time of the algorithm and was changed with time the same as the brain did. When using the reconstruction method, the success rate and the detecting time were 95 % and 0.729 sec, respectively and those results were improved by about 7.6 % and 0.25 sec in comparison to the results of the paper of Ahmed and Ashton-Miller. The results showed that the proposed reconstruction method of the internal model was efficient to improve the detecting performance of the algorithm.

In this paper, a novel 1 DOF hand rehabilitation robot is proposed in consideration of ADL training for stroke patients. To perform several ADL trainings, the proposed robot can move the thumb part and the part of 4 fingers simultaneously and realize the full ROM (Range of Motion) in grasp. Based on these characteristics, the proposed robot realizes several types of grasp such as cylindrical grasp, lateral grasp, and pinch grasp by using a passive revolute joint that can change the thumb movement direction. The movement of the thumb is driven by a cable mechanism and the part of 4 fingers is moved by a four-bar linkage mechanism.

This paper proposes the method indirectly measuring the operating force of the end-effect tip of surgical robot instrument which conducts the surgical operation in the body on behalf of the surgeon's hand. Due to the size and safety obligation to the surgical robot instrument, it is difficult to measure the operation force of its tip like grasping force. However the instrument is driven by cable-pulley torque transmission mechanism and when some force is occurred at the tip, then the reaction force appears on the cable as additional tension. Based on this phenomenon, this paper proposes a method to estimate the operating force from measuring reaction force against the driving motor by using a loadcell. And it induces mathematical equation to calculate the force from loadcell by approaching the modulus of elasticity to high order polynomial. And this paper proves the validity of proposed mechanism by experimental test.

In this paper, we newly propose a novel control strategy of a three joints-robot finger for the purpose of artificial hands. The robot finger is specifically modeled by using a 3D CAD program (CATIA), considering human fingers, and then the proposed control method is verified through the dynamic simulation tool (Simulink and Recurdyn R2). Each slider is individually controlled to be located at the optimal positions where the maximal joint torque can be generated. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed control method, we devise two cases for the reference position of sliders. By comparing the control performance of two cases, the validity of the proposed control method will be verified.

Robotic techniques can be one of the promised solutions to address the prostate cancer which is one of the most important public health problems in medical fields. Despite several past and on-going dedicated researches, the systematic techniques and completed theories have not been established well. Therefore we review the state-of-the-art literature on the applications of engineering technologies with particular focus on diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. The current status of the elastography and systematic DRE are presented as novel diagnostic tools, and an overview of the applied technologies to address the limits of the treatment (radical prostectomy and brachytherapy) is reviewed.

This paper deals with gait assisting rehabilitation robot which helps SCI patient walk again. We propose new concept of orthotic for robot considering motions of Hip and Knee Joints, and how to fit the robot to a user in terms of weight balance and comfortable standing. Then we describe our first engineering sample being designed based on the passive orthotic and show how to make the robot work for SCI patient in basic operation.

Gait analysis is essential for leg diagnosis and rehabilitation for the patients, the handicapped and the elderly. The use of 3D motion capture device for gait analysis is very common for gait analysis. However, this device has several shortcomings including limited workspace, visibility and high price. Instead, we developed gait estimation system using gyroscopes. This system provides gait information including the number of gaits, stride and walking distance. With four gyroscope (one for each leg's thigh and calf) outputs, the proposed gait modeling estimates the movements of the hip, the knees and the feet. Complete pedestrian localization is implemented with gait information and the heading angle estimated from the rate gyro and the magnetic compass measurements. The developed system is very useful for diagnosis and the rehabilitation of the pedestrian at the hospital. It is also useful for indoor localization of the pedestrians.

This paper describes new harmonic disturbance compensation based on a peak filter array for Hard Disk Drives. Unlike a conventional method, the proposed method does not require any sin/cos functions or tables and reduces effects of all harmonic disturbances within a nyquist frequency. Two factors are introduced to parameterize stability and a gain tune. In addition, it is verified that the order of the proposed filter is minimal. From 600 experimental results, 8.5% performance improvement is achieved.

Stroke patients can't use their hands because of the paralysis their fingers. Their fingers are recovered by rehabilitating training, and the rehabilitating extent can be judged by measuring the pressing force to be contacted with two fingers (thumb and first finger, thumb and middle finger, thumb and ring finger, thumb and little finger). But, at present, the grasping finger force of two-finger can't be accurately measured, because there is not a proper finger-force measuring system. Therefore, doctors can't correctly judge the rehabilitating extent. So, the finger-force measuring system which can measure the grasping force of two-finger must be developed. In this paper, the finger-force measuring system with a three-axis force sensor which can measure the pressing force was developed. The three-axis force sensor was designed and fabricated, and the force measuring device was designed and manufactured using DSP (Digital Signal Processing). Also, the grasping force test of men was performed using the developed finger-force measuring system, it was confirmed that the grasping forces of men were different according to grasping methods.

This paper proposes tip position control system which uses a visual marker to determine the tip position of a robot manipulator. The main idea of this paper is to introduce visual marker for the tracking control of a robot manipulator. Existing researches utilize stationary markers to get pattern information from them. Unlike existing researches, we introduce visual markers to get the coordinates of them in addition to their pattern information. Markers need not be stationary and the extracted coordinate of markers are used as a reference trajectory for the tracking control of a robot manipulator. To build the proposed control scheme, we first obtain intrinsic parameters through camera calibration and evaluate their validity. Secondly, we present a procedure to obtain the relative coordinate of a visual marker with respect to a camera. Thirdly, we derive the equation for the kinematics of the SCORBOTER 4pc manipulator which we use for control of manipulator. Also, we provide a flow diagram of entire visual marker tracking system. The feasibility of the proposed scheme will be demonstrated through real experiments.

This paper proposes a cooperative control algorithm for a dual-arms robot which is carrying an object to the desired location. When the dual-arms robot is carrying an object from the start to the goal point, the optimal path in terms of safety, energy, and time needs to be selected among the numerous possible paths. In order to quantify the carrying efficiency of dual-arms, DAMM (Dual Arm Manipulability Measure) has been defined and applied for the decision of the optimal path. The DAMM is defined as the intersection of the manipulability ellipsoids of the dual-arms, while the manipulability measure indicates a relationship between the joint velocity and the Cartesian velocity for each arm. The cost function for achieving the optimal path is defined as the summation of the distance to the goal and inverse of this DAMM, which aims to generate the efficient motion to the goal. It is confirmed that the optimal path planning keeps higher manipulability through the short distance path by using computer simulation. To show the effectiveness of this cooperative control algorithm experimentally, a 5-DOF dual-arm robot with distributed controllers for synchronization control has been developed and used for the experiments.

Unmanned autonomous forklifts have a great potential to enhance the productivity of material handling in various applications because these forklifts can pick up and deliver loads without an operator and any fixed guide. There are, however, many technical difficulties in developing such forklifts including localization, map building, sensor fusion, control and so on. Implementation, which is often neglected, is one of practical issues in developing such an autonomous device. This is because the system requires numerous sensors, actuators, and controllers that need to be connected with each other, and the number of connections grows very rapidly as the number of devices grows. Another requirement on the integration is that the system should allow changes in the system design so that modification and addition of system components can be accommodated without too much effort. This paper presents a network-based distributed approach where system components are connected to a shared CAN network, and control functions are divided into small tasks that are distributed over a number of microcontrollers with a limited computing capacity. This approach is successfully applied to develop an unmanned forklift.

Modern version of advanced supersonic fighter have ATCS (Automatic Thrust Control System) to maximum flight safety, fuel efficiency and mission capability the integrated advanced autopilot system such as TFS (Terrain Following System), GCAS (Ground Collision Avoidance System) and AARS (Automatic Attitude Recovery System) and etc. This paper addresses the design and verification of ATCS based on advanced supersonic trainer in HILS (Hardware In the Loop Simulator) with minimum hardware modification to reduce of development cost and maintain of system reliability. The function of ATCS is consisted of target speed hold mode in UA (Up and Away) and angle of attack hold mode in PA (Power Approach). The real-time pilot evaluation reveals that pilot workload is minimized in cruise and approach flight stage by ATCS.

To inspect the defects of printed markings on the surface of IC package, the OCV (Optical Character Verification) method based on NCC (Normalized Correlation Coefficient) pattern matching is widely used. In order to detect the micro pattern defects appearing on the small portion of the markings, a Partitioned NCC pattern matching method was proposed to overcome the limitation of the NCC pattern matching. In this method, the reference pattern is first partitioned into several blocks and the NCC values are computed and are combined in these small partitioned blocks, rather than just using the NCC value for the whole reference pattern. In this paper, we proposed a method to decide the proper number of partition blocks and a method to inspect and combine the NCC values of each partitioned block to identify the defective markings.